LUXEMBOURG: A group of German banks escaped fines of €100 million, or $127 million, when a European court rejected a plea Wednesday to reinstate penalties levied in 2001 for allegedly fixing fees to exchange Deutsche marks for euros.

The European Commission had penalized the banks, including Dresdner Bank, Deutsche Verkehrsbank and Commerzbank, saying that they had agreed on the exchange fees during the changeover to the euro.

But the Court of First Instance, the No. 2 European court, annulled the penalties in 2004 and the same court on Wednesday ruled that the agreement's existence had not been proved.

Brussels has two months to lodge an appeal with the European Court of Justice. (Reuters)

The developer, based in Bonn, is buying office space to generate more rental income from real estate in some of the biggest European cities. IVG last month raised its annual earnings forecast because of a recovery in rental markets in Germany and other European countries.

"IVG should profit from an improvement in the German real estate market as the economy picks up," said Roland Könen, an analyst at Bankhaus Lampe in Düsseldorf. (Bloomberg)

Banca Intesa offers unit

PARIS: Banca Intesa is in talks to sell its Cassa di Risparmio di Parma e Piacenza unit to shareholder Crédit Agricole as it seeks the French company's approval for its planned takeover of rival lender Sanpaolo IMI.

The Crédit Agricole chairman, René Carron, and chief executive, Georges Pauget, met Carlo Gabbi, chairman of the Cariparma Foundation, and agreed on some "preliminary principles" about the future of the unit, Intesa, based in Milan, said in a statement. The foundation owns 4.3 percent of Intesa and controlled Parma e Piacenza before it was acquired by Intesa in 1999.

Intesa last month agreed to buy Sanpaolo to create the largest Italian lender by customers and it needs to win the approval of Crédit Agricole for the deal to proceed. The Sanpaolo takeover would cut in half the French lender's 18 percent stake in Intesa and the sale of Parma e Piacenza might help win its backing for the deal. (Bloomberg)

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ZURICH: BASF, the largest chemical company, said it would invest €1 billion through 2008 to build six new plants and expand production capacity at its site in Antwerp, Belgium.

BASF will construct one plant together with Dow Chemical and Solvay and one in cooperation with Dow alone to produce materials used in refrigerators, sports gear and shoe soles, said the company, based in Ludwigshafen, Germany.

The three companies will join in a plant producing 230,000 tons of hydrogen peroxide a year while BASF and Dow will build a hydrogen peroxide propylene oxide plant producing 300,000 tons a year, BASF said.

The products are core ingredients in polyurethane, a versatile plastic with a global market of $21 billion, the company said. (Bloomberg)

Korea-U.S. trade talks

SEOUL: South Korea and the United States will hold their fourth round of free trade talks next month on a southern resort island.

The talks will take place from Oct. 23 to Oct. 27 on the island of Jeju, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said. The two sides held their previous round this month in Seattle. Both sides say they hope to reach an accord by the end of the year but have so far reported no major breakthroughs. (AP)

The Czech central bank board voted 5 to 2 in favor of an increase in its benchmark interest rate of a quarter of a percentage point to hold off inflation, the bank governor, Zdenek Tuma, said. He said the board discussed only the quarter-point rise at the meeting, which defied most analysts who had expected policy makers to hold off on a move until next month. (Reuters)

Archer Daniels Midland and its competitors failed to convince a European court that fines imposed for fixing the prices of two chemicals should be annulled. The European Court of First Instance dismissed appeals by ADM and Jungbunzlauer to overturn €57.3 million in fines for colluding in a citric acid cartel. The court also ruled against ADM, Akzo Nobel and Avebe Group in a separate appeal of a penalty for fixing the prices of sodium gluconate, a chemical mainly used to clean metal and glass. (Bloomberg)